Day Three of the National was a lot mellower than Day Two, as comic con Sundays are wont to be. Between the still-gloomy weather and the exhaustion from yesterday we barely dragged ourselves to the express bus by 10, and it took some strong Dunkin' Donuts coffee (for Robin) and hot chocolate (for me) to get us into presentable shape by 11:15 or so. There were a lot of kids, so I was happy I'd brought extra copies of a Justice League Adventures issue Rob had inked to give away. I just wish I'd tracked down the little kid dressed as Robin, who passed close to our table twice but never stopped there; the issue in question featured Robin, and of course I would have wanted the kid to meet a "real" Robin as well. :)
But like I said, somewhat mellow. Rob did a few more sketches, I actually chatted up someone about my (okay, our) Sheagle story in Broad Appeal, and I got a brilliant addition to my sketchbook from Jim Salicrup, who decided he'd draw a crowd shot featuring as many characters from previous pages in the sketchbook as he could. What a clever idea! That's why he hangs out with the Joker:
I mean, would you have the audacity to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? Particularly when he moonlights as convention head honcho Michael Carbonaro?
Jim told me he was also the mover and shaker behind organizing the convention's spotlight panel, Frank Miller "interviewing" Neal Adams, which actually turned into a conversation between the two gents with lucky attendees listening in. Lots of solid history of Adams' comic industry activism and some really great practical advice for current freelancers. A very worthwhile panel, but in my opinion the one that followed was even better.
Sorry that photo's so grainy; something weird seems to happen to my camera every time I try to take a picture of Neal Adams. I suspect that his sheer force of will is just too much to be captured digitally or something. A handful of us stuck around while Adams debuted a 1-hour version of his long-labored-upon Science Project.
I don't want to get into too much detail about the Project before the graphic novel and accompanying DVD come onto the market (whenever that is), but in essence Adams theorizes (based on decades of study) that, among other things: the Big Bang Theory is incorrect; the Pangaean model is deeply flawed inssofar as how it posits one relatively compact land mass all crowded together on one side of a mostly-liquid planet; dinosaurs weren't wiped out by some cataclysmic event like a comet but died off because their migratory patterns were disrupted by... and this is the big one... the Earth's expansion. Yes, it's that simple and elegant: like pretty much all the "star stuff" in our universe, the Earth is in expansion mode and has been ever since its inception. The Pangaean land mass didn't drift along oceans, it took up most if not all of a much smaller planet with less gravity, then split along tectonic weak points as the planet expanded, and the continents continue to do so to this day.
What struck me most about the "Earth is growing and has always been growing" theory is that I found it a very logical way of looking at things. Instead of coming up with a theory and then manipulating the evidence to suit it (or, more prevalently nowadays, to explain away things that don't fit neatly into other received-wisdom theories), Adams did what artists do best - he observed the universe around him. Then he spent years educating himself in all manner of sciences to better articulate his observations, and put together a cohesive and entertaining package to present to the scientific community as a way of establishing this dialogue. He doesn't claim to have all the answers, just a bunch of intriguing questions that form a coherent theory in which he has yet to find any holes.
Of course, as one can imagine, science doesn't cotton to laypeople questioning received wisdom, no matter how many theories have been disproven over the centuries. So Adams has gotten a lot of "as a theorist he makes a great comic book artist" snide comments. But he's not shoving this theory in people's faces as a be-all and end-all unification - just as the start of a dialogue in which way too many academic and grant-hungry scientists seem unwilling to participate.
And I, too, have a theory-- as to why.
The Big Bang, the Great Cosmic Comet Cataclysmic Catastrophe, the raw power inherent in theories like subduction and India moving about and crashing into Asia... it's all very action-oriented and, well, a very male way of thinking about things, isn't it? I mean, generally speaking, women seem far less interested in violence as a process (whether social or scientific) and much more amenable to the idea of gestation, growth, logical if glacial progression, that sort of thing. But that isn't as visually exciting, is it? Doesn't get the old testosterone racing much, does it? And if science is to remain a (relatively) no-girls-allowed zone, we can't have girlish-sounding, gentle-logical-progression theories muddying up clear-cut, cool-looking explosions and natural disasters that Could Happen Again And Wipe Us All Out and create the kind of fear that'll have us running to Big Daddy Scientist to help us out of it, can we? I mean, this stereotypical male thinking, even among the bookish set, is all about destruction, not construction! They don't want to hear about how things grow and are built up unless they can explain it with a... you know, big bang!!
Anyway, it was a very cool two hours spent, at the end of which the con only had an hour to go anyway so we decided to call it a night. We met up with Heidi again outside the panel room, and I stopped her from going into a toilet paper-less WC:
And we talked blogs for a bit as well, before Rob and I went sush'ing down at Monster. After a subway-and-bus ride back home, I spent about ten minutes clearing wet leaves off my car, less time than that bitching to my parents on the phone, and probably way too much time on this blog entry. Hope y'all enjoyed it. And seriously, check out Adams' science project page, you won't be sorry. Unless you're a guy who's into, like, explosions and stuff.
But like I said, somewhat mellow. Rob did a few more sketches, I actually chatted up someone about my (okay, our) Sheagle story in Broad Appeal, and I got a brilliant addition to my sketchbook from Jim Salicrup, who decided he'd draw a crowd shot featuring as many characters from previous pages in the sketchbook as he could. What a clever idea! That's why he hangs out with the Joker:
I mean, would you have the audacity to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight? Particularly when he moonlights as convention head honcho Michael Carbonaro?
Jim told me he was also the mover and shaker behind organizing the convention's spotlight panel, Frank Miller "interviewing" Neal Adams, which actually turned into a conversation between the two gents with lucky attendees listening in. Lots of solid history of Adams' comic industry activism and some really great practical advice for current freelancers. A very worthwhile panel, but in my opinion the one that followed was even better.
Sorry that photo's so grainy; something weird seems to happen to my camera every time I try to take a picture of Neal Adams. I suspect that his sheer force of will is just too much to be captured digitally or something. A handful of us stuck around while Adams debuted a 1-hour version of his long-labored-upon Science Project.
I don't want to get into too much detail about the Project before the graphic novel and accompanying DVD come onto the market (whenever that is), but in essence Adams theorizes (based on decades of study) that, among other things: the Big Bang Theory is incorrect; the Pangaean model is deeply flawed inssofar as how it posits one relatively compact land mass all crowded together on one side of a mostly-liquid planet; dinosaurs weren't wiped out by some cataclysmic event like a comet but died off because their migratory patterns were disrupted by... and this is the big one... the Earth's expansion. Yes, it's that simple and elegant: like pretty much all the "star stuff" in our universe, the Earth is in expansion mode and has been ever since its inception. The Pangaean land mass didn't drift along oceans, it took up most if not all of a much smaller planet with less gravity, then split along tectonic weak points as the planet expanded, and the continents continue to do so to this day.
What struck me most about the "Earth is growing and has always been growing" theory is that I found it a very logical way of looking at things. Instead of coming up with a theory and then manipulating the evidence to suit it (or, more prevalently nowadays, to explain away things that don't fit neatly into other received-wisdom theories), Adams did what artists do best - he observed the universe around him. Then he spent years educating himself in all manner of sciences to better articulate his observations, and put together a cohesive and entertaining package to present to the scientific community as a way of establishing this dialogue. He doesn't claim to have all the answers, just a bunch of intriguing questions that form a coherent theory in which he has yet to find any holes.
Of course, as one can imagine, science doesn't cotton to laypeople questioning received wisdom, no matter how many theories have been disproven over the centuries. So Adams has gotten a lot of "as a theorist he makes a great comic book artist" snide comments. But he's not shoving this theory in people's faces as a be-all and end-all unification - just as the start of a dialogue in which way too many academic and grant-hungry scientists seem unwilling to participate.
And I, too, have a theory-- as to why.
The Big Bang, the Great Cosmic Comet Cataclysmic Catastrophe, the raw power inherent in theories like subduction and India moving about and crashing into Asia... it's all very action-oriented and, well, a very male way of thinking about things, isn't it? I mean, generally speaking, women seem far less interested in violence as a process (whether social or scientific) and much more amenable to the idea of gestation, growth, logical if glacial progression, that sort of thing. But that isn't as visually exciting, is it? Doesn't get the old testosterone racing much, does it? And if science is to remain a (relatively) no-girls-allowed zone, we can't have girlish-sounding, gentle-logical-progression theories muddying up clear-cut, cool-looking explosions and natural disasters that Could Happen Again And Wipe Us All Out and create the kind of fear that'll have us running to Big Daddy Scientist to help us out of it, can we? I mean, this stereotypical male thinking, even among the bookish set, is all about destruction, not construction! They don't want to hear about how things grow and are built up unless they can explain it with a... you know, big bang!!
Anyway, it was a very cool two hours spent, at the end of which the con only had an hour to go anyway so we decided to call it a night. We met up with Heidi again outside the panel room, and I stopped her from going into a toilet paper-less WC:
And we talked blogs for a bit as well, before Rob and I went sush'ing down at Monster. After a subway-and-bus ride back home, I spent about ten minutes clearing wet leaves off my car, less time than that bitching to my parents on the phone, and probably way too much time on this blog entry. Hope y'all enjoyed it. And seriously, check out Adams' science project page, you won't be sorry. Unless you're a guy who's into, like, explosions and stuff.
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